


Unfated (the Home We Made remix)

by psiten



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Minor Character Death, M/M, Moving On, Non-Established Keith/Shiro (Voltron), Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Past Relationship(s), Platonic Soulmates, Sheith Remix 2020, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Voltron: Legendary Defender Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24740716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psiten/pseuds/psiten
Summary: Shiro lost his soulmate once before, and when he came back to Earth a second time, had to confront losing Adam a second time -- along with what it means to be falling in love with someone else. Someone who wasn't "meant to be", but who still means everything.(A remix of "The Home We Made" by UkieS, for Sheith Remix 2020.)
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 60
Collections: Sheith Remix 2020





	Unfated (the Home We Made remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UkieS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UkieS/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Home We Made](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975075) by [UkieS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UkieS/pseuds/UkieS). 



"Hey, Adam..." Shiro murmured at the photo on the memorial wall, keeping his voice hushed even though there was no one around to hear him. "I, um. I guess it's an understatement to say that a lot of things have changed. I don't know if you can hear me or if you'd even want to..."

He brushed away the threat of a tear, not knowing how he was going to get through this if he started crying. Despite Adam breaking off the clinging threads of their relationship when he'd decided to follow through with the Kerberos launch -- bringing to life every fear he'd ever had that his soulmate would decide he wasn't worth it -- Shiro had never imagined everything that came after. Could never have imagined.

Alien prisoner being just the beginning. Even in the arena, fighting for the chance to survive, the idea that Adam wouldn't be here when he got back...

Well, it was what Adam had promised. That he wouldn't be there. But not like this. Shiro hadn't had time to be brokenhearted when the mission was the priority. Hadn't had time when he was locked in a cage, only let out so he could kill fellow prisoners for a crowd cheering their, "Champion". Hadn't had time when Voltron was defending the Universe. All that time, he'd been a good soldier, and pushed everything that wasn't mission critical into a corner of his mind where he could handle it after the future was secure.

In that corner of his mind, he'd always imagined that Adam would at least be alive to hear him say, "I never could have stayed. It's not who I am. I accept that you had to leave, and I'm sorry for being an asshole about everything." He'd accepted that they'd never come back from the way they'd broken up, even if he wasn't sure what it meant to have irreconcilable differences with your soulmate.

The person who was supposed to be your perfect partner.

Shiro sighed, trying to give himself time to mourn at last. "I forgive you, Adam. I understand what you were saying, and I hope you can forgive me for not being able to live that way. Keith..." he started, trailing off. Was it bad etiquette to say things about the man he thought he might be falling in love with now, when he was talking to the memory of his dead lover? Probably Adam wouldn't mind, he decided. If anyone would understand everything that'd happened between him and Keith, it'd be Adam.

"Keith told me you checked on him when the Garrison announced my... my _death_ , I guess. He told me what you said. Thank you. For understanding. Understanding that he needed someone, and that I wouldn't have been happy staying behind. I'm glad you didn't regret leaving, that you got to live on your own terms. I wish... I wish we could have had the chance to figure out how to be friends, Adam. You seemed like a really good friend to have."

There were a thousand other things to say, and at the same time there was nothing else he knew how to say. Well, except for one thing. It seemed stupid, almost like he was asking permission from his dead ex-boyfriend to date again when of course Adam would have wanted him to move on and have some chance at being happy again.

But he needed to talk to _someone_ , and there weren't a lot of people around who knew what it was like to not only lose a soulmate, but to _break up_ with one.

"I've been looking into the soulmate thing, you know. Trying to figure out what happened. We were supposed to be perfect, right?" he said, laughing weakly, although he wasn't sure who he was trying to convince that he was okay. "Obviously, we didn't end up being perfect _romantically_ , which was all I cared about growing up. You know, me and my rom coms, and always crying at weddings. Well, the world is pretty much a wreck right now, so answers aren't exactly as easy as a web search, and it's not like codifying information on soulmates is a top priority for the Reconstruction. But you'll be happy to know, my therapist says platonic soulmates are totally a thing. Yes, that's right. I'm seeing a therapist. Keith said I wasn't allowed to just sit in my own head hating myself for everything that happened anymore. He's been great. I don't know where I'd be without him right now. Probably on a Garrison autopsy bench."

Shiro shut his mouth, breathing in and out, letting the darker thoughts in his head fade out before he started talking again. He could do this.

"Anyway, I read this great article Pidge -- that's Katie Holt, by the way, she actually likes Matt's old nickname now -- this great article Pidge turned up out of the wreck of some magazine's servers about soulmates who were, like... business partners. Best friends. A pair of surgeons, these ladies who ran an independent bookstore, aerial firefighters. I like to think that maybe, if I'd gotten back with Voltron before Sendak took the Earth, we could have found a way to be like that. Not _together_ , but still... partners. That we could be soulmates, and have it still make sense that I think... I love..."

Pausing again, he thought hard about what he was trying to say.

"I've fallen in love with someone, Adam. And it's not that I think I never loved you, or what we had wasn't love. But this is different. It's like nothing I've ever felt before. And I'm hoping so, so, _so_ hard that it really is possible to be soulmates with someone for reasons other than love, because I'm not his soulmate. I couldn't be. I was yours. And the mark on his arm has got to match someone, somewhere. So I've got to hope that he's got a partner somewhere who isn't fated to be the love of his life, because otherwise what am I supposed to do?"

He twisted the bouquet of flowers in his hand, gently, not hard enough to break or bruise. "Keith," he said out loud, admitting it to himself and the memory of Adam, if he was listening. He swallowed hard, nodding at how right it felt to say his fellow Paladin's name. "If _Keith_ has some star-blessed romance waiting for him with somebody, somewhere, whose arm matches his, I'd never stand in his way. But what am I supposed to do with all the things I can't help feeling? I don't know, Adam. I don't know how to be in love with someone whose soulmate isn't me. How do I even start? How do I ask?"

"... Shiro?"

The voice was as tentative as it was familiar, which meant his heart nearly stuttered to a stop because he could never mistake Keith's voice. Shiro whipped around to see dark hair that defied styling, dark violet eyes that always seemed to reflect the stars, one arm in a sling and one leg in a brace that were the only remaining evidence of a body nearly broken by that terrifying fall back to Earth.

The crutch braced under his good arm had a bouquet of flowers tied to the crossbar -- stargazer lilies so dark, they were practically red, mixed with pink carnations.

"Keith!" he gasped, dabbing at his eyes with a tissue again before he walked over. "I thought they were keeping you in the hospital another few days."

"I slipped the guards. Besides, they said I needed to move, for my circulation. I'm just moving a little farther than they told me to." Catching Shiro's exasperated, if fond, stare, Keith rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, I'll go back to my bed before the next nurse rotation. I was going stir crazy, okay?" More somber, he looked over at Adam's portrait on the wall. "Lance... said I could find you here. I don't know if you want anyone, but I know how hard it is to say goodbye alone."

"You're not just _anyone_ , Keith," he said, dropping a hand first to Keith's shoulder, then to hold the hand holding his crutch steady. It felt better than fate ever had been, the way their hands fit together. With a wince, he asked, "How much did you hear?"

Keith waited for him to make eye contact with all the self-command he'd grown into as the Black Paladin of Voltron, and said in a voice that didn't allow for argument, "I'm not hearing anything until you say it to my face." Softer, he added, "When you're ready."

He'd waited this long, he seemed to be saying with the unshakable set of his jaw. He'd wait as long as he had to. Memories that belonged to this body but not to his mind were full of Keith making it clear where he stood, and that he wasn't going anywhere.

_As many times as it takes._

_Shiro, I know you're in there!_

_I love you._

"Is there such a thing as being ready?" asked Shiro, looking back at the memorial wall. All his feelings had been packed away like shattered glass, and after being hidden from the weathering of time, now that there was time to take them out and deal with them, they were just as sharp as they'd always been.

"To lose someone? No. But you can be ready to keep living, eventually."

There wasn't pity or judgment in Keith's eyes, just understanding and patience. It was exactly what Shiro needed at the moment. Because of course Keith understood.

He squeezed Keith's hand, not ready to let go. "When I'm ready to keep living, Keith, I want you to know... I'd like it to be with you. You, Keith Kogane, specifically. So we're clear, I'm not just talking about the Voltron Coalition."

"Yeah, I could tell," Keith laughed, a hundred emotions fighting on his face for the right to be expressed. Shiro knew the feeling. "As if you could get rid of me now."

Bracing against the crutch, mindful of the healing bone in Keith's sling, he hugged the young man who might just be the person he _wasn't_ fated for and got to love anyway. And if he tried not to look too closely at the jagged, abstract pattern showing under the cuff of Keith's shirt, and if he tried not to wonder if there was someone waiting in the wings to steal Keith's heart away, well, who could blame him? He wasn't going to pre-emptively break his own heart over something that might not even happen.

"Thanks, Keith. For everything."

"Always, Shiro."

It was amazing beyond words, with everything they'd been through -- time, war, and death -- to know what, "Always," really was, and to know that Keith meant it.

"So is it all right if I join you? Say goodbye to Adam, too?" he asked, as if Shiro would ever say no to that.

He shook his head, and led Keith over to the wall, moving better on his crutch than some people did with two good legs. "Of course. Adam was your friend, too."

Despite the injuries, Keith insisted on placing the bouquet on the ground without assistance. No one would know to look at him how close he'd been to never waking up, never moving again. The doctors couldn't explain how Keith had escaped a fall like that without permanent nerve damage, but the doctors hadn't flown the Black Lion. She took care of her Paladins. She'd helped keep him from dying permanently, even without a body to hold him. How could she do any less for Keith, who was so much more than a stand-in? Having Keith back wasn't a miracle. At the same time, it never had been and never would be something that Shiro took for granted.

Keith caught him staring again, this time at his face instead of at his soul mark, but Keith still pushed up his sleeve as he smirked so the full pattern was visible. "So, uh... Shiro. On a completely different topic, that has nothing to do with anything..."

"Yes?" he asked -- cautious, but whatever Keith had to tell him, he could take it.

"Sometime, you might want to take a look at the space wolf's right foreleg." He cast a sideways glance up at the shock on Shiro's face with a deepening blush. "I'm just saying. Not for any particular reason. But you might want to look."

"The space wolf has a soul mark?" Shiro spluttered.

Rolling his eyes, Keith acted like that was the most normal thing in the universe. "Every sentient being has a soul mark, Shiro."

"The space wolf is _sentient_?"

"Hey, that's my soulmate you're talking about," said Keith, bumping his shoulder with a careful nudge from the arm in the sling. "A little on the nose, I know. My soulmate is a literal lone wolf, but what can you do? The universe has a sense of humor."

That wasn't why Shiro was smiling, though. "Wow. And yet he still hasn't told you his name?"

"More like I can't pronounce it, and I don't want Lance or Pidge to ask me to try. Also, he'd find it kinda cringey to have people trying to howl at him in the middle of a fight." Looking over again, Keith asked, "Promise you won't tell?"

"Our secret," Shiro promised.

And if he wrapped an arm around Keith's shoulders to hold him close while they said goodbye, well, who could blame him? The universe was wide, and unpredictable. You had to take those moments of peace when you could find them.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Thank you for signing up for the Remix Exchange, and giving me the chance to give you something based on your work! The simple sweetness of your original story, in the context of everything that happened in Voltron, made me want to try something like this (even though I've never written a soulmates AU before).


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